Hospital waiting lists still increasing

Lengthy waiting times for appointments at public outpatient clinics around the country, some of them extending to many years, are still on the increase, according to the latest HSE statistics.

And the HSE is still way off its national target that all new routine outpatient referrals should be seen within 90 days.

The latest reported average waiting time for an appointment at ENT outpatients at Kerry General Hospital is now 2,311 days - over six years and four months, according to the HSE's figures for May.

This is the longest outpatient waiting list in the country reported by the HSE's monitoring service - HealthStat.

It compares to a waiting time for the same clinic of 2,248 days reported by the HSE in April.

Kerry Hospital is followed by the Mid-Western Regional in Limerick, which has a waiting time of 1,105 days (just over three years), according to the May figures. This is the same figure for Limerick as reported in April.

The third hospital in the ENT outpatient waiting list table, Galway University, showed an increase in the average waiting time from 888 to 920 days (over two-and-a-half years) between the April and May figures.

According to the May figures,the Mid-Western Regional Hospital in Limerick had the longest waiting time in the country for a general medicine clinic OPD appointment, at 799 days (two years and two months), an increase from 787 on the April figure.

In second place in the general medicine OPD wait table is Galway University Hospital, with an average wait of 423 days(just over one year and one month) recorded in May, up from 412 in April.

For general surgery clinics, the longest average wait is at Portlaoise Hospital, where the wait is 646 days (over-one and-a-half-years).

Overall, the average waiting time for an OPD appointment across all specialties in all public hospitals currently is 161 days - nearly six months, according to the HSE.

This is 71 days longer than the HSE's target of a maximum wait of 90 days for a patient to have an out-patient consultation.

The HSE statistics also show that Portiuncula Hospital in Ballinasloe has the highest percentage of staff hours lost  due to absenteeism of any hospital in the country. The May figures show that just over 6% of hours were lost at Portiuncula due to absenteeism.

For more on the HSE's HealthStat figures click here

[Posted: Thu 06/08/2009]